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By Amy Knight
How long will Vladimir Putin last? It is hard to imagine Russia without its steely-eyed, iron-fisted, and hugely popular prime minister, especially since he has hinted so broadly that he might run again for the Russian presidency when the term of his protégé, Dmitry Medvedev, expires in 2012. Starting in that year, the Russian presidential term will extend from four to six years (a change introduced by Medvedev) and Putin would legally be allowed to serve two more terms. This means he could conceivably be Russia's leader until May 2024, when he would be seventy-one years old.
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If this sequence seems eerily reminiscent of the Brezhnev "era of stagnation" (Brezhnev was the Soviet leader for eighteen years, until his death in 1982 at age seventy-five), it is not surprising. Despite the physical vigor of Putin and the modern, youthful demeanor of Medvedev (who even blogs), today's Kremlin leadership is acting more and more like it did in the Soviet era--when aged, ailing bureaucrats presided over a one-party system, fraudulent elections, a state-controlled press and television, rampant official corruption, and an all-powerful security service that kept political dissent to a minimum. As was the case then, little is known today about the inner workings of Russia's political regime, so analysts, both in Moscow and in the West, have resorted to Kremlinology, drawing on the Moscow rumor mill (which flows freely on the yet to be censored Russian Internet) to understand what is happening.
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Bez Putina: Politicheskie Dialogi s Yevgeniem Kiselevym (Without Putin: Political Dialogues with Yevgeny Kiselev)
by Mikhail Kasyanov
Moscow: Novaya Gazeta, 318 pp., 290 rubles
Soviet Fates and Lost Alternatives: From Stalinism to the New Cold War
by Stephen F. Cohen
Columbia University Press, 308 pp., $28.50
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